VATICAN CITY (CNS) – Jesus considers all the baptized to be his friends and will always try to restore them to life and health as he did with his friend Lazarus in the Gospel, Pope Francis wrote.
"Jesus is not afraid to come close to us, even when we 'stink' like a dead person buried for three days," the pope wrote in the preface to the Italian edition of Jesuit Father James Martin's book, "Come Forth: The Raising of Lazarus and the Promise of Jesus's Greatest Miracle."
The Italian edition, published by the Vatican publishing house, was scheduled for release June 4 and Vatican News published the pope's preface in Italian and English June 3. Fr. Martin said the upcoming paperback edition of the book in English also would carry the pope's preface.
Pope Francis praised the book for how it "makes the biblical text come alive" with a reading that is "always 'loving,' never detached, nor coldly scientific."
"Father James has the perspective of a person who has fallen in love with the Word of God," the pope wrote, adding that reading the book made him wonder "how often we manage to approach Scripture with the 'hunger' of a person who knows that that word really is the Word of God."
"The fact that God 'speaks' should give us a little jolt each and every day," Pope Francis wrote. The Bible is a "love letter" that God sent to people living in every time and every place.
Pulling up a copy on one's phone or opening a pocket edition "when we have an important meeting, or a difficult encounter or a moment of unease," the pope said, can help people understand how the Bible is "a vibrant witness to a God that is not dead and buried on the dusty shelves of history."
Turning to the focus of the book – the raising of Lazarus – Pope Francis said Fr. Martin helps readers see that "in the end Lazarus is all of us."
"We are also his friends; we too are, sometimes, 'dead' due to our sin, our shortcomings and infidelity, our discouragement which degrades us and destroys our soul," the pope wrote.
But Jesus was not afraid to approach Lazarus who had been dead three days, Pope Francis wrote, and he "is not afraid of our death or our sin. He stops only in front of the closed door of our heart, that door that opens only from the inside and that we double-lock when we think that God can no longer forgive us."
"Jesus is not afraid to approach the sinner, any sinner, even the most fearless and brazen," the pope continued. "He only has one concern: that no one gets lost, that no one loses the chance to feel the loving embrace of his Father."
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